Friday, October 23, 2009

The Question of Rights

Here's a call for papers and proposals for "The Question of Rights," a conference to be hosted by San Francisco State University on September 16-17, 2010:

Rights, both individual and collective, have long been a theme in American society, often seen in conflict with state power. We welcome papers on assertions of rights by insurgent groups, resistance to rights claims, and governmental efforts to suppress or promote rights, in areas including but not limited to: civil liberties; disability rights; labor and economic rights; feminism and antiracism; immigration; environmental justice; access to healthcare; the prison industrial complex; sexual orientation; the stateless; and human rights.

Our goal is to bring together a wide variety of people from a range of academic, activist, legal, and community spaces to examine the place of rights within both the context of American society (as situated within a boarder global political community). To that end, we welcome participation from historians, both senior and junior scholars, graduate students, community advocates, archivists, and lawyers. We invite proposals for individual papers, panels, or roundtables.

The deadline for submission of proposals, consisting of an abstract of 300 words for individual presentations or 1000 words for panel and workshop proposals and a one-page CV for each participant, is March 15, 2010. Send your proposals to Christopher Waldrep, Department of History, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California 94132 or via email to cwaldrep@sfsu.edu.